meals

Two of the native-speaker English teachers in our office had birthdays: one on Saturday the 19th, the other on Monday the 21st. We decided to fête the birthday people on Monday, so to that end, I brought in homemade cole slaw, homemade corn slaw, leftover sausage, the components for mac and cheese (pasta, double cream, Gruyère, herbs, seasonings, bacon), and some store-bought rolls. One of the birthday people, J, bought several half-racks of pre-cooked baby-back barbecue ribs, which turned out to be pretty good. The other birthday person, M, brought in little personal-sized tarts for dessert, and those were quite delicious.

Today, Tuesday, I fed the substantial leftovers to the rest of the office for dinner. I deliberately set dinnertime for 7:30 p.m. because I knew half of the staff would be gone: I had a lot of leftovers, but not enough to feed twenty hungry Koreans. Of the three teams I invited, only two showed up, but we still had ten dinner guests.

Here are some photos from yesterday and today. First up: I had leftover sausages from previous events, so I took those out of the freezer, thawed them a bit in my microwave, cooked them in beer (not being a connoisseur, I normally pick my beers at random; this time, it was a Hefe-Weißen), then finished them with a sear on a dry pan. J, who is South African and knows his braai and wors, proclaimed the sausages exquisite.

Next up: corn salad, which wasn't as good this time, but which nevertheless proved fairly popular. I made it spicy, like last time, finely mincing up green chili peppers along with several colors of bell peppers. I also added dried onion flakes and crushed red pepper, black pepper, my standard slaw sauce (mayo + pickle juice), and a spoonful of sugar because the whole thing still tasted somewhat bland. I think I bought the wrong brand of corn; one online expat contended that Korean corn is what Americans would call "feed corn," i.e., it's fibrous roughage designed for horse molars—bland and lifeless.* The local groceries all sell American brands of canned corn; I'll stick to those from now on, even if they're a bit more expensive.

Below: cole slaw. I grated the carrots in a cheese grater, and this time around, I minced the cabbage into tiny pieces, burger-joint-style. I added way more black sesame seeds than last time; I think their flavor really enhances the slaw. What's funny is the recipe actually calls for poppy seeds, but I didn't have any on hand. Maybe I'll order some from iHerb next time.

When it came to the item you see below, I braced for impact, expecting people not to like it. This was my "Cajun fried rice," made from the echoes of the gumbo I had served the previous week. To make my previous batches of gumbo, I had boiled my homemade andouille first, which left me with a redolent, fatty broth that reminded me of what happens when you boil chorizo. Not wanting to waste the sausage water, I used it to cook up a huge bucketful of rice, and that was the base for my Cajun fried rice. I diced up and pan-fried a kilo of chicken breast, pan-fried (in andouille fat) two bagfuls of small shrimp, pan-fried my remaining andouille, then used the rendered fat from the fried andouille to pan-fry a series of veggies: onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, etc. I had a rotting bagful of green onions left over, so I took the time to strip away all the rot, then mince the fresh remainder and mix it straight into the fried rice as is, i.e., uncooked. This added a fresh bite to the rice. The rice itself also got a frying, but this created an annoying layer of nurungji on the bottom of the pan—a savory crust of rice made even more savory by the andouille fat. I mixed everything together (well, not the nurungji, but everything else), hoping that the large cut I had used for the bell peppers wouldn't bother anyone. (It was getting late; I was tired, and I didn't want to spend the time micro-mincing the bell peppers the way I normally do.) Result:

People loved it. J asked to take a batch home, and tonight, one of the female staffers took a bunch of the rice home, along with a few other leftovers, including both slaws and the remainder of my mac and cheese (explanation forthcoming).

Here's a shot of most of the staffers chowing down:

And here's the mac and cheese:

Once again, I used Iron Chef Mike Symon's miraculous recipe—Gruyère plus double cream, no Béchamel. Although I didn't have rosemary, I herbed and seasoned the dish my way, and it turned out just fine. Everyone complimented this dish; it was the obvious favorite. I had to explain, to the people taking some mac and cheese home, how to go about reheating the dish, given that it was guaranteed to harden in the fridge: get a pan, add some milk, bring the milk to a simmer, then add the mac and cheese and stir, slowly and patiently. Do not microwave, on pain of causing the cream/cheese sauce to separate and become a nasty, greasy mess.

On Monday, I added pancetta to the pasta. Today, it was good ol' Amurrican bacon, cooked to a crisp. In all, I'd say the mac and cheese was pretty damn good. I ate two servings.

Below, some store-bought ribs after a session in the microwave:

The ladies play Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who among them will wash half the dishes:

In this final shot, the men do the same:

Everyone thanked me for the meal. This whole thing was an unexpected effort: J had mentioned the birthday thing only a week or so beforehand, shortly after we'd had the gumbo. I normally do big cooking projects once a month, so yeah, this took me a bit by surprise. But I was happy to do it: an excuse to cook for others is always a good thing. The crowd washed most of my dishes but neglected to do a few of them; no worries. I washed what little was left to do. Come February, I'll be doing it all over again... but probably only for the R&D/native-speaker crowd, not for all four teams on our side of the floor.

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*Horses do eat corn, in case you were wondering.